


In Her Own Time

by Lisse



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen, Mystery Character(s), Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:24:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisse/pseuds/Lisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everyone on Flight 815 is impressed by the Island's secrets. To some people, they're just one more nuisance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Her Own Time

**Author's Note:**

> Characters in the story may be less OC than they appear. Please return all seats and tray tables to the upright position.

In some circles, Mrs. Walker is a legend. After the crash she's something of a legend too, in no small part because she's well into her seventies, but nevertheless emerges from the wreckage almost unscathed and proceeds to bring order to her own small corner of the chaos.

Everyone she cajoles or bosses around or talks out of a state of sheer gibbering panic remembers her being matronly and commanding and comforting in those first few hectic hours.

Mrs. Walker remembers telling people to stop being ridiculous or else she'd hit them over the head with the nearest piece of luggage.

 

She does her share of the work - more than her share, according to most people, but just because she's seventy-six doesn't mean she's an invalid - and she more or less lets the excitement happen to other people. Someone asks her about her husband, so she tells them he's been dead for twelve years, and then someone else asks if she has anyone waiting for her back in England, to which she replies that she has no other family left and that if her colleagues at the university have any sense at all, they've already started fighting over her office furniture.

Somehow this makes her the one in charge of tending to the graves, once they start having to bury people. She's not a religious woman, but there's a difference between religion and simple respect for things bigger than she is, so she makes little bundles of flowers and tidies up the plantlife and listens to the other survivors, mostly. She's an exceptionally good listener. She had to be, once.

That's the reason why she's not surprised to look up one day and see children watching her from the jungle. Three children, holding hands.

"You'll have to do better than that," she says, because one of the things she's learned from listening is that people see things that may or may not be really there. Other women as deep-down sensible as she is might believe they're hallucinating. Mrs. Walker doesn't. She's practical, yes, but she didn't used to be. She knows that something strange and inexplicable could be out there in the jungle.

That doesn't mean it's telling the truth.

"We miss you," the littlest child says. "We miss you so much. Please come with us. We all miss you."

Mrs. Walker turns her attention back to the flowers on the graves.

"You're not what you look like," she says evenly. "I doubt you miss me at all."

The children aren't there when she looks up again. She isn't concerned.

She buried them far away from here, a long long time ago.

 

Mr. Eko is one of the few people to the camp who's earned the right to a title in her eyes, along with Mr. and Mrs. Nadler and Mr. Reyes, much to the latter's embarrassment.

No one dreams of calling her anything but Mrs. Walker. They know she has a first name from the passenger manifest, but she hasn't heard it spoken since her husband died. There's something about her that commands respect, and something else - sincerity, maybe - that makes her want to bestow respect in return.

She approachs Mr. Eko as he's putting up his church and stands watching him with her hands tucked in her pockets. "Would you like any assistance?"

He smiles down at her. "You don't strike me as a religious woman, Mrs. Walker."

"No," she agrees, "but I admire belief."

That seems to be answer enough.

 

No one believes that she knows how to use a gun until she claims one by sheer force of personality and systematically shoots the branches off a sapling. She hates wasting ammunition like that, but it had to be done.

"I learned during the war," she says as an explanation. It's close enough to the truth to pass all but the most exacting inspections, and she's discovered few people are as meticulous as she is.

Nonetheless, she is not one of the people who volunteers to stay behind at the camp. She's in good shape for a woman her age and reasons that the convoy to the radio tower needs all the extra protection it can get - and if she's learned anything in her later life, it's that everyone underestimates an old woman.

That's fine with her. There are places where Mrs. Walker is a legend, and that's not half as fun as it sounds.

The children are watching her as she helps pack for the trek. They're battered and broken this time, as if they were in the plane crash instead of her.

"Why did you leave us?" the middle one asks. Blood pours out of his mouth as he speaks. "How could you do that to us?"

"Come with us," the little one says in a thin wavering voice, trying so hard to be strong. " _Please_."

Mrs. Walker ignores them, glances back at the graves she's so carefully tended to, and shoulders her rifle.

 

She chooses Jack's side because he didn't kill anyone today.

Tomorrow, who knows?

 

When the lights die down and she can see again, she's alone on the beach. The smoke from the freighter is still rising over the ocean and the camp is still there, what's left of it, but there isn't another soul in sight.

She checks the graves to make sure nothing's happened to them, and then she packs herself water and food and picks up her rifle and walks off into the jungle.

"It's because of us," the oldest child says. They're standing right in her path, coming into existence between one second and the next. "You're all alone now because you left us."

Mrs. Walker sighs and puts one hand on her hip. She frowns down at them. They meet her eyes, hurt plain on their faces despite their obvious attempts to hide it. A clever touch, that.

"What did I tell you?" she says softly. "You have to do _better_  than this."

She starts walking again, right towards them. They part for her at the last moment, watching her with betrayed eyes.

After she's gone past them, she doesn't bother to look back. She knows they'll be gone.

Whoever's trying to intimidate her doesn't know her half as well as they think they do.

Everyone always underestimates an old woman.

 

Soon enough there's a cabin.

It's sitting there like it belongs on the island, except Mrs. Walker knows it wasn't there before. She _hmphs_  at it, and when it shows no signs of disappearing on her, she pushes the door open and walks in with her rifle held cautiously at her side.

There's a man sitting at the table. Maybe he's really there. Maybe he isn't. Maybe he looks like something else entirely and is permitting her to see only what he wishes.

She's been a skeptic and a realist most of her life. She isn't about to stop now.

Hands still ready on the rifle, she lowers her gaze to the table set in the middle of the cabin. There are things on it that don't belong on that don't belong on this island. They're the kinds of things that one only reads about in storybooks these days, if one were the type to read storybooks at all.

They're from the place where she was a legend. If she were someone else, she would run her fingertips over the feathers and the thin, deadly shafts.

When she looks back up at the man, he is watching her intently. He doesn't seem to be armed, but that doesn't mean anything. All that matters is that he has things that shouldn't exist, not _here_ , and that in all likelihood he knows a great many facts he probably shouldn't.

"Who are you?" she asks after a moment, because otherwise she's going to ask _how_  he knows and what the things with the children's faces are and why something's happened to the rest of the survivors and not her, why she's been left alone _again_.

She'd ask all those things if she weren't so sure she could find the answers herself.

"I'm Jacob," the man says.

She nods once, simply and curtly. Her whole life, people have commented on how graceful and dignified she can be when she wishes it, how commanding. "I suppose you know my name already."

"Of course," he says.

He smiles - faint, but not unkind - and holds out a hand.

"Hello, Susan."

**Author's Note:**

> 'sup Narnia


End file.
